Wednesday, July 5, 2017

They just won't stop losing

Trump tweeting a wrestling meme that depicted him taking out CNN was not what most people would consider to be very presidential. While I don't personally disapprove, he should have at least broadcast it on his personal Twitter rather than his work account. The Potus twitter handle should remain professional. Trump opened a huge broadside to make the tweet. He took a political risk. This should have been very easy for CNN to play off of. They could have made Trump look like the small man, and simply stated that the tweet was below their threshold of dignity and they were moving on to more important matters. If they had a sense of humor, they could have riffed off the incident, and issued their own memes in response.

Instead, they delved into another manic "Trump's Tweets" marathon and gave the president another resounding success. Not content to just engage in fanatical coverage that only makes their opponent stronger, they've now actually responded not just unethically, but illegally by blackmailing the creator* of the meme. They've responded to Trump's arguably undignified behavior with behavior that is most certainly unethical and probably illegal. He prodded CNN with a stick, and they responded by shooting themselves in the foot. Game, set, match. This is why I don't condemn Trump's tweets. They're working. They're literally driving his enemies (our enemies) insane. If his tweet's were crude and ineffective it would be one thing. But his tweets are destroying the lying press. As long as it's furthering the right cause, it's good.

It's worth examining why CNN, and the left in general, would be so inept at handling their war with Trump. From a distance we can see they're completely fumbling this, but we've been seeing this for over a year now. Why don't they learn? One of my favorite proverbs comes from Sun Tzu.

Wait by the river long enough and the bodies of your enemies will float by.

Because we are virtuous (or try to be), our most despised enemies tend to lack virtue. Which means they tend to do themselves in, one way or another. The left is dominated by irrationality and hatred, which we complain about endlessly. And yet it's their great weakness. Their tactical playbook has been reduced to feigned outrage and shaming. Those are the only cards they have left. They have other cards at their disposal, such as in the recent CNN incident, but they don't know how to play them. The leftist organizations have tended to promote within their ranks those who specialize in signaling outrage and shaming the enemy. So that is all they really know to do.

Trump grasps this instinctively, perhaps not in the intellectual sense, but he knows how to push his enemies' buttons. He knows how to get the reactions. I don't believe for a second that he'd stop using his Twitter provocatively if his enemies stopped falling for his bait. No, he's a man who needs enemies to be fighting at all times. He loves fighting and winning. If the enemy wisened up, then he would just change the bait. This isn't dumb luck. But they won't adapt. They can't. And besides, they represent the ideology where victimhood is the highest virtue. They love fighting and losing.

* As it turns out, the guy they threatened to doxx, a Reddit user over at r/the_donald, wasn't even the creator of the meme Trump posted, although he did post a similar one.